


six years

by khepria



Category: Ookiku Furikabutte | Big Windup!
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-18
Updated: 2014-07-18
Packaged: 2018-02-09 08:35:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1976265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/khepria/pseuds/khepria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You can't dedicate six years of your life to being so serious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	six years

**Author's Note:**

  * For [reogulus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reogulus/gifts).



> dedicated to a very dear friend, who has been exceedingly patient and gracious to me. i cannot apologize profusely enough for how long you had to wait for this piece. 
> 
> as well, thank-you to transversely, who spurred this idea very early in my mind when i was faced with indecisiveness between three out of four possible writing prompts. as well, thank-you always to kuruk who has been my consistent rock throughout the process.

It was April, the month where tree blossoms fluttered prettily in the wind, descending at five centimeters per second before reaching their destination of worn grey cement pathways, organic litter making elegant the ground. Blooming, then windswept to where they ended up underneath the soles of penny loafers as students idly travelled to and from school premises and collected up by the cleats of middle school boys aspiring for athletic greatness.

The coach stood in front of all of the trembling first years, who stood with their feet shoulder width apart, eyeballing each baseball club candidate critically. The original seven centimeter distance between each player lessened as they unconsciously huddled closer together to boys whose acquaintance they barely held, discomfiture with the coach’s unrelenting stare translating to growing willingness to invade one another’s personal space. It was a preliminary test of mental fortitude.

“So, what do you want to get out of baseball?” was the question that the coach posed to each of them. The second and third years shuffled behind him, smiling encouragingly to the nervous prospects, a refreshing sentiment as mist and mildly cool morning dew. On the other side of the fence that divided the facilities between the junior grades from the seniors, there was the loud, booming hurrah as the high school’s baseball club begun their warm-up laps around the field. “I want you to yell it now, all at once! On the count of five, four, three, two--” (“to be,” begun someone in the second row) “--one!”

Without time to contemplate, they all yelled out the first thing that came to mind, their words distorted among the shouting all of the others, altogether in an orchestrated, incoherent artificial jumble. To play their very best, to be good enough to be on the other side of the school grounds, to be one of the best ten players three (or four, or five) years from now. It took time for their syllables to begin syncing with their shared aspirations, already rising above them like water vapour to clear blue skies and back then, they were a packet of small mustard seeds nestled in Tosei soil.

 

*

 

Two and a half years later, even if under immense pressure to with hand on biblical text, Kazuki could not recall what conviction he had shouted out that day. The best he could do is mention something vaguely about character development and maybe to do with having fun. At that time, looking through dulling silver chain link fence, wanting to be like their upperclassmen hadn’t felt like a six year commitment to baseball. Six years was half of their lives, a tiny vanishing point on a winding road forever ahead. His words had combined with others to form white noise, the volume overpowering. None of them knew what laid ahead of them, the extent of physical conditioning required to cleanly hit a hard ball pitched at them going a hundred and thirty kilometers per hour over a distance of eighteen and a half meters and to sprint almost twenty-eight between bases. The glamour of winning did not come to them by signing their names in a registration box, but through hard, grueling effort. None it was easy, yet here he was, almost halfway through. 

All of this, knowing that baseball was more than simply for fun and dedicating all of his spare time to the sport, for one door of many. The middle school coach had written a recommendation for Kazuki for the high school baseball club, in case the scouts overlooked the green players in their own garden in their search for talent outside of Tosei grounds. Everyone assumed it was a given that continuing to be a catcher in Kazuki’s high school years, that the invested three years would be for naught if he didn’t see through the full six years. And it wasn’t as if he didn’t think so, too, despite having other aspirations beyond baseball. Vaguely defined goals, doors inching open as long as he put forward the effort to turn the knob and push.

This was true of his other teammates too. For example, Shingo had spent the last two weeks toiling away intently on a top secret project in the back of his sparsely-used mathematics notebook, lulls in his work measured by long sighs. What this mystery project was, Kazuki didn’t know. He didn’t want to pry into other people’s business since it felt like a busybody thing to do. Indulging in honey-laced gossip is a social gluttony that people should try to do without, but curiousity got the better of him on a brisk, overcast October autumn day.

Turning his chair around to meet Shingo’s desk, his forearms placed stiffly against the edge of plastic backing in a poor attempt of casualness, Kazuki said, “you’ve... been working on something pretty intensely these past couple of days.”

Shingo looked up from his notebook, ink smudging against light blue grid paper, the upwards motion of his head accompanied by a long, stretching yawn characteristic of a casual laziness that was usually stomped out of other third year middle schoolers out of necessity. The beginning of third year normally deluged one into cold trepidation, knowing that semester marks suddenly were critical and dictated which schools you were eligible to apply into, and knowing that which high school you attend governs what post-secondary institutions you’ll be able to successfully enter. The pressure to start life right was enormous, only alleviated temporarily for three years by the fact that Tosei was a combined school and most students stay to avoid the stress of revision. Shingo lifted his left hand to reveal a hand drawn plan of the administrative office downstairs. “What? This?”

Kazuki nodded, attention focusing on the bright red X over the back room. “Yeah. What is it?”

He tapped the cap end of his ballpoint pen against the edge of his desk. “So you know Nakazawa, right?”

“He’s the high school team’s starting third baseman.”

“No, not him. I’m talking about that really tall, foreign-looking first year kid that the nuns have been fawning over.”

Kazuki leaned forward, chair legs lifting from the ground, to get a better look at the crooked lines that formed crude rectangles, humming a quiet acknowledgement. Of course he knew Nakazawa Rio. When the Nakazawas moved five years ago from Brazil to Kazuki’s quiet, mundane neighbourhood five years ago three houses away, Mrs. Nakazawa painstakingly visited every house on the block to introduce herself and her two sons in heavily-accented Japanese, charming each household with a gift of homemade sequilhos de coco wrapped in cellophane and bright yellow ribbon and an invitation to the Nakazawas’ housewarming party. It was also by Kazuki’s mother’s recommendation that both brothers were enrolled into little league baseball. “What about him?”

“He said that his brother--” (“Who is the high school team’s starting third baseman,” said Kazuki, to which Shingo rolled his shoulder in a nonchalant shrug. Extraneous details!) “--said that the nuns have a _huge_ safe full of contraband.”

“And Shimazaki wants to liberate it,” supplied Yamanoi, barely audible. His face was buried in the crook of his elbow, crumpled math homework stuck to his other cheek.

Kazuki scrunched his eyebrows. “What would you want to do with a bunch of non-regulation socks?” which was what most of the confiscated wares consisted of. A shabbily worn uniform reflects poorly on the school was what the nuns said to teary girls as they handed over their baggy, oversized leg warmers and to scowling boys who accidentally left home wearing white socks instead of the regulated navy blue from the uniform catalog. “They’re better off donated at the end of the year,” he reminded Shingo, in case he forgot about the existence of the unfortunate, sockless people of the world.

“Not socks,” said Shingo. He looked out towards the doorway and the sliding windows to the hallway leerily, and then to the large clock mounted at the front of the class. There was two minutes before classes were scheduled to resume. Lowering his voice by several magnitudes, he stage-whispered, “this isn’t donated _ever_.” 

To Kazuki’s knowledge, the only other things that the sisters sequestered were paper notes passed along the pews during Mass, but those were thrown away at the end of the day. 

Shingo cleared his throat, face growing severe. “Have you heard about all of the _porn_ \--” and scandalized regret begun forming at the bottom of Kazuki’s stomach, puddling, “--that they’ve accumulated since Tosei’s inception? It’s basically a pornography _museum_ spanning like half a century.” 

Kazuki tried to feign disinterest, but his face was becoming bright red like the X on Shingo’s immoral liberation battle plan map. He paused to search for a diplomatic response for a nefarious plot such as this, a statement that would encompass the correct amount of shaming and discouragement without invading into aggressive territory. Moments passed, and words didn’t quite articulate properly after seeing the shimmering, dedicated quality that Shingo’s hazel eyes adopted after talking about this... very, very immoral initiative for a potentially _fake_ urban legend. “Th-that’s!” stammered Kazuki. Shingo began laughing. “You d-don’t even _know_ if it even  _exists_ \--” (“But it’d be _great_ \--”) “--but the punishment for _breaking!_ and _entering!_ the school safe definitely exists!” 

“Awwww,” Shingo cried, his coo broken up by peppered snickering. He flipped to the back pages of his notebook, fingers twirling his blue ballpoint pen like a baton. At the top of the page, in bold black strokes, read: **THE HISTORICAL PRESERVATION COMMITTEE OF TOSEI STAG MATERIALS**. It was a surprisingly eloquent name for a club with such a perverted mandate. “I’ll put you down,” he said, pen already to paper, and begins writing Kazuki’s name underneath a prior-existing list of four others, all belonging the third year members of the baseball club. 

“NO!” The anguished yell startled the rest of the chattering class, unused to the volume from the typically reserved Kazuki. Spluttering, he threw out his right arm to stop Shingo in vain. 

To Kazuki’s chagrin, the language teacher walked into the classroom at the same time that Shingo proclaimed, “and now we have enough to be an official club!”

 

 

*

 

The following Sunday afternoon, Kazuki found himself sitting at the coffee table in the Nakazawas’ living room circling mistakes in Rio’s vocabulary homework and scolding Junta for his inappropriate snickering at disproportionately written kanji. Over guava paste thumbprint cookies, Kazuki asked, “so um, did you” and he begun vague hand gesturing, “uh, hear from Roka-san that the school safe and--” followed by ten beautiful, carefully thought-out euphemisms for pornography, wasted on Rio’s limited vocabulary to understand metaphors and creative similes.

Junta imploded with laughter after the eighth one. 

Rio scowled and his ears burned scarlet with self-consciousness. “Are you making fun of me!” he cried indignantly, voice teeming with frustration. It felt needlessly cruel to have spoken to him using poetic language that he barely understood.

“No!” exclaimed Kazuki, who was feeling more and more mortified.

“Then just say it simply!” Rio beseeched with a surly pout. He slouched forward, his arms sliding across the glass table top, and burrowed his cheek against his right bicep. After a prolonged pause, Rio realized how rude he must have sounded and added a subdued, “... please.”

“It’s,” not important was what Kazuki wanted to say, but he inadvisably gave a rolling pebble momentum and it accumulated enough material tumbling to become a dignity-shattering boulder. He mumbled, using the word that he had tried to avoid all conversation.

Rio’s already large eyes grew even larger. “What? I wouldn’t--I _didn’t_ tell Shimazaki-san about, a- _about_ \--” and with each about, his voice rose half an octave and blotchy, pink patches bloomed on his cheeks, “--aaaaabooout something like  _that_!” 

“Oh! But it _would_ be fun to rescue!” Junta shrieked. “You should do it, Kazu-san! We all,” he pointed at the three of them, first himself, then Kazuki, and then Rio, “can do it!”

“ _Jun-san_ ,” screeched Rio. “That’s _trespassing_! That’s _stealing_! And it’s! It’s _not a good thing to do_!”

Without a hint of sarcasm, Junta continued, “should we _ask_ the sisters nicely? Do you think they’d give it to us? They might if Rio is the one asking!” 

Rio clutched his crucifix, gasping. “ _No_! I would _never_!”

From upstairs, Roka bellowed a thunderous “noisy!” and the three of them fell into a hushed silence. Junta stared intently at the stairwell, as if contemplating whether it was worth potential psychological trauma to go ask Rio’s scary older brother for intel. Kazuki reached over to where Junta’s hand was and pressed his palm firmly on top of it and shook his head. Rio made the sign of the cross and recited a quiet _Hail Mary_ before he resumed working on his homework.

That was the last time that Kazuki investigated into the veracity of the adult contents of the school safe.

 

 

*

 

To Kazuki’s relief, despite Shingo’s surprisingly detailed notes on staff schedules and Junta’s unbridled enthusiasm for the liberation of smut curated by students of Tosei past, not much came out of it. Brisk autumn plummeted into frigid winter, and after snow melted and nourished seeds germinated into seedlings and dormant plants began thriving under warmer, green spring, the novelty of rescuing decades-old porn materials from the school vault was trouched by the excitement of graduating and more importantly, finally, finally moving onto the high school side of the fence.

 

*

 

 

Excitement abated once everyone came to the blunt truth that summer was a terrifying time of year.

When it rained, Kazuki thought little of it because rainy days were mundane. It came, and went, rinse and repeat sporadically ninety-four times a year, almost eight thousand times in a lifetime. Sometimes, it rained two days in a row. Sometimes, dark grey skies lingered for the entirety of a week. Rain was so predictable that the beginning of summer was sometimes known in lieu as rainy reason. No one thought much of it until it torrented for forty days. No one thought that rain could be dangerous until the ground underneath you became saturated, and Kazuki watched awestruck as water flooded, sloshing everywhere. Lightning flashed, illuminating the diamond. Then a loud, deafening clap of thunder--one, two, three, four of them--from the other side of the world, boisterous and cheerful.

Rain will eventually subside, relenting, and now everyone knew the anger of rain. Kazuki told himself that he will be more conscious of it once it stopped and the sun returned, the ground slowly hardening beneath his trainers. The rain washed away all preconceptions by eroding at the expectations that his seniors had given him, leaving him with a smooth, blank slate still soft, still impressionable. It was precious insight. A rain like that came once in a hundred generations, he had thought then. 

(“Doesn’t it feel like _not even in a million years_ \--”)

And then it happened again, two years later. 

Kazuki hadn’t forgotten the dread instilled into his being from filtered shadows formed from light percolated through overcast clouds, but it was different. This time, he was the one in volatile waters gulping mouthfuls of it and the panic weighed heavily in him like the water in his lungs. All of the insight and forced, artificial calm paled against the innate urge to flounder, to work against his survival by overtensing and overthinking. When faintly glimmering hope returned and he remembered how vital it is to relax, it only delayed the inevitable. He had already worked himself into irrecoverable exhaustion through prolonged anoxic insults. Only then, caught in rain that started as light drizzle that increased in flow and momentum and transformed itself into a tsunami, did Kazuki understand what it was like to drown.

 

 

*

 

The six years that seemed so endless back when Kazuki was almost twelve years old came to an abrupt conclusion at age seventeen. It went by unexpectedly quickly. He had lived one day at a time and without notice, somehow nine hundred and ten of them went by and added up to equal two and a half years, and then it was... just over. 

The sun still rose the next morning following that dreary, rainy game, and every morning after. He still sweated underneath the bright, glaring sunshine overhead and hot, hazy, humid air still enveloped the city. How could his summer have been over if all of the symptoms of it lingered? It should have lasted longer. There was not enough salt in the ground from the labour of his efforts and too much of it from saline tears. 

It was too early to be standing on the other side of worn, grey wire fence and Kazuki was too old to be envious of high school baseball players running laps and shouting time-honoured militaristic cheers and listen wistfully for the sharp _clack_ of metal bats hitting hard balls spat out of clunky pitching machines.

A stray fly ball hit the fence, rattling it, before falling to the ground with a noisy thunk. Kazuki continued walking forward. Shingo elbowed him, the joint nudging him forcefully between the space between his third and fourth rib. His gaze was pointed to the field, to where Rio fervently waved apologies to the two of them. “It’s okay to look,” he said.

“The only thing we should be looking at is our university prep revision,” said Kazuki. 

Shingo groaned gratuitously as he adjusted the strap of his shoulder bag, neck cracking in the process. “You’re too serious. That’s six months away!”

 

 

*

 

And six months passed by, as quickly as Kazuki expected it to, and it was January, a wintry month where temperatures could drop as low as negative fifteen degrees and without fail cooled everyone into an indolent type of inertia. Fresh, new-fallen snow blanketed barren tree branches, aging rooftops, and dull, grey cement sidewalks alike. Nature’s temporary reprieve from urban blemishes. It was also the week before university entrance exams, a weekend of grueling, intensive testing a breadth of subjects that determined your eligibility to over eight hundred post-secondary institutions and to prove quantifiably that you were a well-rounded student, that the academic foundation supporting you is solid. In a few short days, students across the nation will be regurgitating all that they know about absolutely everything, from finicky English syntax to the components of a eukaryotic cell to matrix calculus. Doing poorly on this exam was a surefire way to crash before leaving the starting line, to close a door before you ever touch its handle. 

Knowing this, the study guides in Kazuki’s knapsack weighed heavily on his shoulders as he loitered half an aisle away from the magazines and newspapers. A selection of ice creams and frozen desserts stared up at him. It was too cold outside to even consider. The plastic wrapping of Kazuki’s tuna onigiri set crinkled loudly as he casted his forty-fifth glance at Shingo’s direction. He has been in this 7-Eleven for the past twenty minutes, and no number of urgent staring at Shingo deterred him from idly perusing glossy magazine covers with scantily-clad models smiling cheerily to their readership nor did his awkward, suspicious fidgeting alert the twenty-something year old store clerk at the underage immorality at the front of the shop. Why did Shingo decide to look at them now? Who would want to buy that kind of... recreational... material to cram school? He should just buy an issue of _Weekly Shounen Jump_ instead, like any other normal high schooler. They might not even let him buy it at the register. 

Feeling Kazuki’s nervous aura spreading to the rest of the store, Shingo said loudly, “you can check out before me if you want.” 

Kazuki pointedly did not reply and feigns interest in matcha mochi ice cream, cheeks stinging and uncomfortably hot despite his safe distance. It’s not like Shingo addressed him specifically, nor did he bother looking up from this month’s issue of _Cream_ magazine. Nothing implicated their acquaintanceship aside from maybe their tan uniform slacks, but the other five people browsing brightly-packaged snacks and confectionary were also Tosei students. Shingo could have been talking to _anyone_ in the store.

His pipe dream dissipated when Ito, the girl who sat two seats to Kazuki’s right in class, elbowed Shingo playfully in the back on her way out and cheered, “Hang in there, Kawai!” Kazuki jolted, hands clamping down onto his onigiri with such force that it became more like a pitiful, clumpy rice ball and less like the factory-manufactured triangular perfection it was when he had picked it up from the bento area. He hunched his shoulders and mumbled an abashed thank-you. Shingo put down his magazine and waved disparagingly. “See you both at the practice exam!” she laughed and automatic glass doors slide open, winter air seeping into the 7-Eleven like a slow fog. 

At the same time, three middle schoolers meandered into the store, twin girls and a boy. They prattled loudly to each other as they approached the body care and health products located on the shelves opposite of the newspaper stand, behind Kazuki to the left. He didn’t want to eavesdrop on their conversation, but their volume made it difficult not to overhear them.

“--ing to explain this to your mother?” asked one of the middle schoolers to her injured friend. By the faint reflection on the freezer door, Kazuki could see him wincing and massaging his left forearm.

The boy rolled his shoulders in a halting, jittery way characteristic of barely contained excitement, exuding with joy contrary to his pain-induced grimacing. “I’ll just tell her that you don’t get the opportunity to catch for a submarine pitcher every-- _ow_! Hanai!”

“Asuka is fine,” corrected the other girl, the one flanked by his right side. She had pinched him. “And you were just catching _snowballs_ , Abe-kun.”

“It felt like they were made out of _ice_. He had a mean pitch! You’re lucky he didn’t hit _your_ face.”

“He wouldn’t!” she said, offended on their absent pitcher acquaintance's behalf. “He’s their ace pitcher! There’s no such thing as _luck_ when it comes to ace pitchers--”

“That’s not true. Some of them have lousy control! When onii-san played in the Seniors, he came home with bruises _all the time_ from their ace pitcher.”

“Can you two stop,” scolded the girl who was not Asuka. She picked out a box of Salonpas pain relief patches from the assortment of remedies on the top shelf and placed it into the crook of his right arm. “This is the best choice here but next time, take better care, Abe-kun.” 

“Do you think I should?” he asked. “I was thinking a bag of frozen peas would be good enough... I don’t want to go to Tosei smelling like Salonpas...”

It was fairly late to be visiting Tosei, Kazuki thought. His immersion in their discourse was severed when Shingo yelled, “Kazu!” purposefully using his name to chase away any doubt to who he could have been referring to this time. He waved two magazines, one pink and the other yellow, both with covers depicting pretty women dressed in outfits that did not belong outside of the bedroom. “If you’re done, let’s go check out!” 

While listening in on the three middle schoolers bantering behind him, Kazuki had forgotten that he still needed to go to the cashier to pay for his onigiri and Shingo to purchase his smutty, non-educational (and very obscene) reading material. He paid first so not to have to see the cashier’s face when Shingo unabashedly set down his magazines and yakisoba bun onto the counter. He waited for her to apologize to Shingo with a memorized, monotonous explanation on how only individiuals twenty years or older can purchase adult materials, and seeing how they were both obviously high school students, she will need to see some form of government identification to prove their age, but it never came. Instead, she simply told Shingo, “your total is 1550 yen,” which he paid with little fanfare.

“I still think you shouldn’t have,” Kazuki said to Shingo once they were outside. The cold air felt wonderful and refreshing against his flushed face.

“Why not? It was convenient.”

Kazuki let out a deep exhale, the hot puff of air rising from his mouth as white steam against the winter temperature. It was too selfish to say that he shouldn’t have because Kazuki felt uncomfortable. Going by Shingo’s gleeful beaming, half of the reason why he bought them then instead of from some secluded vending machine after cram school was very likely _because_ it worked up Kazuki so much.

They had walked seven paces away when a girl shouted, “excuse me!” behind them.

They both turned. She was unmistakably one of the middle schoolers from back at the 7-Eleven. Hanai maybe Asuka, maybe not Asuka. Running up to them, she said sheepishly, “sorry to bother you, but you’re both Tosei students, right?” Her fingers fidgeted, first at the hem of her wool jacket, and then to snap a bright orange hair clip open to tuck a stray strand of auburn hair into it.

“Ah,” Shingo affirmed.

“Do you know which way the school is is?”

“It’s just down the street,” said Kazuki. Shingo helpfully pointed out which direction.

She turned her head to where he directed, sighing, and then pulled out a flip phone from her coat pocket, its tiny front illuminating her face as she clicked a button on the side to see the time. “How far down?” she fretted at the same moment that the store’s automatic doors opened. Her two companions ambled towards her, plastic bag in hand.

“Is it far?” her twin echoed. 

“It can’t be _that_ far,” said Abe.

It really wasn’t, but none of them looked like they were very familiar with the area. Middle school wasn’t so long ago, but when he considered them, Kazuki got a distinct impression that they were very young and carefree. He wondered if he, too, exuded simplicity when he was their age. “Do you want us to walk you?” he offered.

“If we didn’t have a practice exam in _half an hour_ ,” Shingo pointed out, as if he was a responsible student and not someone who wasted the last thirty minutes idly browsing porn magazine covers.

“Oh!” both girls cried in unison. 

“Are you third years?” asked the twin with the orange hair clips, her face becoming increasingly astonished.

“We can go ask someone else,” the other reassured. 

“It’s not hard to find,” said Shingo. “Just four blocks down, then one block to your right.”

The three middle schoolers expressed their gratitude to them through a series of thank-yous, Abe bowing slightly and the girls bending their knees into a curtesy. Once she raised her head and straightened her back, the twin without colourful hair accessories unzipped her sports bag to reveal from it a clear, resealable zipper plastic bag filled with an assortment of brightly-wrapped Kit-Kats. “For good luck,” she cheered, enthusiastically shoving a fistful of the chocolate wafer bars into Kazuki’s bag. “For the both of you!” 

These were a common gift to give to students studying for entrance exams, as kit-kat sounded very similar to kitto katsu, meaning _you will surely win_. For her to be carrying around so many, the three of them must be third year middle schoolers studying for entrance exams themselves.

“You didn’t need to,” Kazuki said, their ardent expressions starting to fluster him. From the periphery of his vision, he saw Shingo remove something from his convenience store purchases. Comprehension came too late, and Kazuki could not have hissed out a reprimand quickly enough to stop him.

“Have this, kid,” Shingo said. He held out one of his newly purchased glossy, shrink-wrapped pornographic magazines, and the boy took it without thought. Abe glanced at his gift curiously before his face turned crimson and he dropped it down onto well-trodden snow. 

“I’m not old enough for that,” he squeaked, voice cracking midway. The twin with the orange hair clips crouched down to pick it up for him, only to promptly drop it back onto the ground once she caught an eyeful of its cover.

“Nonsense,” Shingo snickered, relishing in all of the scandalized faces around him. “If you’re going to make it into Tosei, you ought to christen it with bringing this with you to school! It’s practically _tradition_!”

Kazuki hoped dearly that they would leave it on the floor to be buried by the next snowfall.

 

*

 

Graduation day came, a beautiful March day that marked the end of an era. They had started out as nine first year players together, and the six of them that stuck through it all at Tosei had found themselves gravitating towards their old training field in the middle school division. Standing in front of the freshly painted yellow dugout, they stared out into the diamond marked meticulously with chalk on reddish-brown earth. Nine months ago, Kazuki had felt uprooted. Today, the ground beneath his feet had never felt more solid.

Feeling nostalgic for their first day, Kazuki proposed, “on the count of five, should we shout out our goals and aspirations?” 

“What are we, twelve?” asked Shingo.

 

*

 

A lot happened in six years. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> a chronological series of moments in the life of kawai kazuki, from age 12 to 18.
> 
> writing tosei was surprisingly more challenging than i had expected, but it was a fun opportunity to experiment with more light-hearted material. it was very reminiscent of my high school years and of my catholic school education.
> 
> thank-you for reading.


End file.
